Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God

"In this book Greta Christina tackles the subject of death with the insight of a philosopher and the relaxed candor of a friend — that really cool, intelligent friend who understands and cares."
-David Niose, author of Fighting Back the Right: Reclaiming America from the Attack on Reason

Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God by Greta Christina -- available now!

Coming Out Atheist

“"Witty, wise, helpful, and humane, this clear and engaging book is most timely.”
-Phil Zuckerman, Ph.D., author of Faith No More: Why People Reject Religion

Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why by Greta Christina -- available now in ebook, print, and audiobook!

I Support Atheism Plus!

Atheists plus we care about social justice.
Atheists plus we support women’s rights.
Atheists plus we protest racism.
Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia.
Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.

EVENTS

Everything You Know about God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion: Shameless Self-Promotion, Round 3

Finally, there’s one more book with writing of mine in that I wanted to tell you about. This one actually came out a few months ago, and I’ve mentioned it in passing a couple of times, but since I’m on a “shameless self-promotion of anthologies I’m in” roll, I wanted to take a moment to tell you about it all on its own.

It’s the enormous new tome from Disinformation, Everything You Know about God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion. A collection of critical, skeptical, irreverent, and sometimes just plain hilariously snarky writing on organized religion, the book is enormous, sprawling with a huge assortment of writing on an exhuberant variety of topics. Some of the concepts will be familiar to regular readers of atheist books and blogs (the piece on the religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers, for instance, should be a surprise to exactly none of you). But quite a bit of it was news to me. This is the book where I got the bit about the Virgin Mary getting impregnated in her ear; and I’m embarassed to admit that I hadn’t heard of the Ghost Dance before I read this book. And instead of primarily focusing on, say, Christianity or Islam, it covers gobs of different religions and religious beliefs, in an “I don’t discriminate, I dislike everybody equally” philosophy that’s badly needed in godless writing.

You should definitely read this book with a careful and skeptical eye. Disinformation has a tendency to use the “throw everything into the soup pot” approach to book editing, especially with the huge sprawling tomes they’re known for, and past books have included work that’s definitely been on the credulous, conspiracy- theory side. So don’t automatically believe everything you read in it. That being said, it’s still a fine book, smart and funny and informative about all sorts of weird shit, an excellent addition to any godless book collection. And they were kind enough to include my piece Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God, which I’m obviously very pleased about.

But there’s one feature of this book that stands out for me more than any other. And that is this:

Richard Dawkins also has a piece in this book. A funny, snarky piece making an analogy between religion and drugs.

In other words:

I’m in a book with Dawkins!

I’m in a book with Dawkins, I’m in a book with Dawkins, I’m in a book with Dawkins!

I’m all a-twitter with girlish glee. Imagine excitedly fluttering hands and a happy little Snoopy dance. I am tickled pink about this, all out of proportion to how important it really is.

Comments

>>>I’m in a book with Dawkins!
you don’t know me – I read your blog on my lj via rss feed – but I had to stop by and squee immoderately with you.
this couldn’t be any cooler unless he is squeeing on his blog about being in a book with you!